Before Your Very Eyes – CAMPO / Gob Squad

Overview

Anyone with kids knows that they grow up fast but you’ve probably never seen them grow up quite this fast.

Before Your Very Eyes, one of the more intriguing acts at this year’s Melbourne Festival, shows a group of children aging through their entire lives within the space of an hour. The cast of child actors play out their possible futures – as teenagers, as adults, as elderly – on a stage walled by two-way mirrors, so they play in private to each other and their own reflections, while the audience watch through the glass.

Devised in collaboration between Belgian theatre company CAMPO, which has done a series of plays for adults using child performers, and convention-defying Anglo-German troupe Gob Squad, it will be as thought provoking and innovative as theatre gets. Book fast, because its brief season at the Malthouse will be gone before you know it.